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I am blooming there as a flower

Shohaku Okumura in his latest book about Zen chants and texts, Living by vow, writes the following (p.167-168):

(...) When we see the flower without thinking "this is beautiful" or "What is this flower called?" we really meet the flower itself. When we see the flower without thinking, we find that our life, this body and mind, and the life of the flower are the same life. There is no separation. We can say:"I am blooming there as a flower". To extinguish our views, to let go of thought, or to negate our own way of thinking is not negative. It makes our life very vivid and dynamic(...).

If you come here with your petty pretty understanding of the path and get it approved and stamped, you are in for a big disappointment. And this disappointment is part of practice itself.

This path is about loosing, loosing our beliefs, our ideas, our theories and breaking the little boxes in which we try to put everything away.

When will we wake up to the fact that that all sutras, all shobogenzo, countless teachings take place here and now in the body-mind of Buddha, that to study sutra and texts is not to study dusty books or scrolls coming from the past, that Dogen was not born yesterday and we are so old already, that once we surrender to this hidden-treasure-in-full-view, when we strip everything to just let the original face shine, it meets all beings and things as just an expression of itself?!! YOU ARE THE SHOBOGENZO!!!Wake up! It about you and your life and not old guys playing little pretty koan games and lovely poetic contests.

Thank you for the teaching Taigu.
When I see a blooming flower I instinctively want to sniff it and bury myself inside it. I think I'm doing exactly what this flower wants me to do No thoughts are necessary, just millions of years of evolution for the flowers to perfect their ways of attracting insects, birds and animals (including humans).

Yes, Marek, any attempt to make something out of this ( at least in my experience so far) has proven to be ridiculous.
Loosing opens you up, vulnerability makes more available to others. When we start this all Zen circus thing we ride the self, and this riding action kills the belief that that self would take you anywhere. We ride to stumble, to fall, to fail. And when left with nobody, not even a Dharma name, when left with an empty broken bowl, the whole universe revels itSELF.
In the middle of Shikantaza, what is your name? Tell me!!! ( and if you can find one, time to forget it)

This reminds me of the urban legend of a philosophy professor who placed a chair in front of the students for their final exam and said, "Prove this chair exists." One student wrote for only a few seconds and turned in his paper which would later receive an A. His answer? "What chair?" If true, the student was truly in the moment!

Also reminds me of British cartoon I watched as a kid called "Dangermouse" where the protagonists travelled to the deserts of Africa and met a soldier among the dunes. He tells them, "I joined the Foreign Legion to forget." "Forget what?", they reply. Says the soldier, "I don't know, I have forgotten."

Thank you Taigu.

Gassho,
Dosho

Ordained Priest -In-TrainingPlease take what I say with a grain of salt,
especially in matters of the Dharma!

... When we start this all Zen circus thing we ride the self, and this riding action kills the belief that that self would take you anywhere. We ride to stumble, to fall, to fail. And when left with nobody, not even a Dharma name, when left with an empty broken bowl, the whole universe revels itSELF...